This is hearbreaking. Medical crisis in Japan's evacuation shelters: Can anything be done to help? #Japan #jishin

KESENNUMA, Japan, March 19, 2011 (AFP) - Overworked doctors are struggling to provide care to the sick and infirm evacuated from hospitals to ill-equipped shelters after the giant earthquake and tsunami that ravaged Japan. Public health professionals have warned of flu outbreaks in the congested shelters - often little more than school gyms with no heating or running water, meaning the medical treatment on offer is basic. At best. Many survivors were left without their regular medications when the tsunami waters destroyed their houses and swallowed entire picturesque towns in northeast Japan over a week ago. According to the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, at least 15 survivors, most of them elderly, have died since the disaster due to stress and fatigue exacerbated by a cold snap that saw blizzards sweep across the region. In the port town of Kesennuma, the five-storey Inawash...